Mr. Prodmore met this with reprobation. “Wasn’t she to understand from the first that we don’t permit——”
“Anything of that sort?”—the girl recalled it at least as a familiar law. “Oh, yes, papa—I thought she did.”
“But she doesn’t?”—Mr. Prodmore pressed the point. Poor Cora, at a loss again, appeared to wonder if the point had better be a failure of brain or of propriety, but her companion continued to press. “What on earth’s the matter with her?”
She again communed with their silent witnesses. “I really don’t quite know, but I think that at Granny’s she eats too much.”
“I’ll soon put an end to that!” Mr. Prodmore returned with decision. “You expect then to pursue your adventures quite into the night—to return to Bellborough as you came?”
The girl had by this time begun a little to find her feet. “Exactly as I came, papa dear,—under the protection of a new friend I’ve just made, a lady whom I met in the train and who is also going back by the 6.19. She was, like myself, on her way to this place, and I expected to find her here.”
Mr. Prodmore chilled on the spot any such expectations. “What does she want at this place?”
Cora was clearly stronger for her new friend than for herself. “She wants to see it.”
Mr. Prodmore reflected on this complication. “Today?” It was practically presumptuous. “Today won’t do.”
“So I suggested,” the girl declared. “But do you know what she said?”